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St. Lawrence Environmental Trustee Council (SLETC) • Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe (SRMT)
• Natural Resource Damage Assessment Office (NRDA)
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
• Department of the Interior (DOI)
• New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC)
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Differences Between Restoration & Remediation
NRD claims compensate the public for past, present & future injuries to natural resources
Remediation is USEPA’s efforts
to reduce risk to human health Remediation/Clean-Up reduces
environmental risk but does not restore natural resource losses.
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Natural Resource Damage Assessments (NRDA)
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• Regulatory Authority: CERCLA • “Natural Resources” as defined by CERCLA • Goals:
• “To assess the extent of injury to a natural resource and determine appropriate ways of restoring and compensating for that injury.”
• To “make the public whole” following release of hazardous substances & oil.
• NRDA: the process of collecting, compiling, and analyzing information to make determinations on the extent of injury and appropriate ways of restoring and compensating for the injury.
St. Lawrence Assessment Area
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This area includes the St. Lawrence River from the Moses Saunders Dam, Long Sault Dam, and upstream of the Wiley-Dondero Canal downstream to Lake St. Francis, as well as a suite of tributaries, and downstream in the St. Lawrence Estuary. Also included: • GM Remediation Area • RMC Remediation Area • Grasse River • Raquette River • St. Regis River
St. Lawrence NRDA Case Background
• Responsible parties or “The Facilities”: • Alcoa West • Alcoa East (formally Reynolds Metals Company) • General Motors Central Foundry
• Multiple Contaminants: PCBs, PAHs, cyanide, fluoride, metals
• One of first cooperative NRDAR cases • One of first cultural assessments
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Cooperative NRDA Process
• Companies fund Trustee injury and compensation determination • Parallel to remedial effort • Enhances exchange of information and expertise
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• Goal is to reduce interim losses, achieve settlements and restoration sooner than through litigation • Challenges: trust, agreement, agree to disagree
Three Pronged Approach to Damage Assessment
• Ecological Injury/Losses • Injury to natural resources
• Human Use Recreational Fishing Losses • Lost fishing opportunities
• Cultural Injury • Injury to natural resources that affects
significant cultural uses of those resources
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Ecological
Recreational Fishing Cultural
Current Status of NRDA • GM NRD claim – 2011 bankruptcy settlement
• $1.8M for restoration •Assessment costs
• Alcoa NRD claim – 2013 settlement •$8.3 M for ecological restoration projects •$1.8 M for fishing/boating access •$8.4 for cultural restoration projects •Assessment costs
• Release of Restoration Compensation and Determination Plan
(RCDP) for public comment
• Restoration Planning, Implementation and Monitoring
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Community Outreach & Restoration Planning
• 2006: Press release and letters sent to potentially interested individuals, agencies, and organizations.
• St. Regis Mohawk Tribe: Community outreach.
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Site-Specific Evaluation Criteria for Restoration Projects • Location within the St. Lawrence watershed • Linkage to injured resources or associated services • Proximity to injured resources • Habitat connectivity • Proximity to lands with protected status • Cost effectiveness • Potential contamination or other issues that might preclude project selection • Benefits to protected species or sensitive or unique habitats • Public enjoyment or use of natural resources • Likelihood of success • Feasibility and sustainability of project • Part of larger local or regional restoration plan or vision
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Ecological Injury • Quantified injury to birds, fish and benthic
organisms from PCBs, benthic organisms from PAHs and fluoride, and mammals from fluoride using Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA) • additional qualitative injury associated with
other contaminants • toxicity thresholds from the literature
• Calculated interim (past and future) injury from contaminants
• Final output for HEA is acre-years of habitat loss
• Restoration projects have nexus to injury • selected to provide similar acre-years of
habitat gain
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Preferred Restoration Projects
• Wetland Enhancement/Restoration • Streambank Enhancement/Restoration • Upland Enhancement/Restoration • Avian Enhancement/Restoration • Fisheries Enhancement/Restoration • Amphibian and Reptile
Enhancement/Restoration • Mammal Enhancement/Restoration • Land Conservation
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Ecological Restoration Project Examples
• Coles Creek Blandings Turtle Habitat Acquisition and Restoration
• Dickerson Island/Murphy Islands Predator Control, Revegetation
• Fish Passage – Hogansburg & Madrid Dams
• Habitat Acquisition – Snye Marsh (RAMSAR) and Wilson Hill
• Native warm season grassland restoration
• Habitat restoration and stocking of lake sturgeon, Atlantic salmon, northern pike
• Riparian buffers
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Preferred Fisheries Projects
• Streambank Restoration: riparian buffer zones, fencing, revegetation
• Fish Spawning Habitat: Open access to and improve existing spawning areas
• Lake Sturgeon stocking in local rivers from existing or mobile hatcheries
• Atlantic Salmon stocking in local rivers • Fish Passage (e.g.,Dam Removal,
Tributary Culverts): Provides fish and wildlife greater access to habitat and improves water quality and sediment transport.
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Human Use Recreational Losses Recreational Fishing
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Human Use Recreational Losses
• Fish consumption advisories for PCBs exist for the Grasse River and St. Lawrence River
• Used data from “RTI/TER St. Lawrence Area Outdoor Recreation Survey, 1991”
• Random Utility Model used to estimate loss to recreational fishing • Calculated “lost” fishing trips between 1981 and 2030
• Restoration projects sought to replace lost recreational opportunities: shoreline fishing and boat access
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Fishing/Boating Access Restoration Projects Evaluated Boat and Shoreline Access • Grasse River Upper Grasse River Middle Grasse River- upstream of Massena
Lower Grasse post-remediation
• Raquette River Mid – River Lower River
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Fishing/Boating Access Projects Preferred
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Mid-Raquette River Boat Launch [Springs Park] Lower Grasse River Boat Launch [Rt. 131 Bridge] Lower Raquette River Canoe Launch Upper Grasse River Boat Launch [Madrid] Middle Grasse River Boat Launch [Rt. 37 Bridge]
Cultural Assessing injury, challenges, preferred restoration
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Assessing Cultural Injury
• Impact on uses of natural resources for traditional purposes
• Community driven approach • Interviews with elders and
others to understand sense of cultural loss and identify compensatory restoration projects
• Anthropology driven approach
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Cultural Restoration Goals
• Seek to promote the restoration of land-based cultural practices and traditional economic activities within the community and preservation of the Mohawk language
• Four areas of traditional cultural
practice •Water, fishing, use of the river •Medicine plants and healing •Hunting and trapping •Horticulture and basket-making
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Research, Community Outreach & Restoration Planning
• Collection of materials • Dr. Taiaiake Alfred, principle
investigator • Community Advisory Committee
established • Oral History Project • Summary Report “The Effects of
Environmental Contamination on the Mohawks of Akwesasne”
• Radio announcements, public meetings, newspaper articles and mailing of Cultural Impacts DVD.
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Cultural Restoration Plan
• Apprenticeship Program • Funding Various Tribal
Cultural Institutions • Promotion of Mohawk
Language
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Cultural Apprenticeship Program
• Learning and teaching through direct experience in the natural environment and the passing of knowledge to younger generations
• Indigenous Approach: • Listening • Watching • Doing
• Goal: Apprentices would reach a point where they possess the skills of a master and can then, in turn, take on a teaching role.
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Apprenticeship Program • Apprentices learn directly from
‘Masters’ or knowledgeable community members. •Four areas of traditional cultural
practices
• Masters, Apprentices, language specialists will be hired to learn and revive cultural practices
• Full-time program for 4-5 years.
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Funding of Cultural Institutions
• Existing Akwesasne-based institutions and youth programs
• Provides necessary financial resources to stabilize their operations
• Institutions chosen with Cultural Evaluation Tool
• 4 Institutions qualified for funding, in the process of revising proposals
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Mohawk Language Restoration
• Core feature of overall restoration plan • The Goal: to increase number of fluent
language speakers • All participants in the Master/Apprentice
Program and funded Cultural Institutions
• Includes the development of a community-wide strategy to saturate Akwesasne with Kanien’keha /Mohawk using all available print and broadcast media (radio, newspapers, print, video, street signs, education materials, etc.)
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Next Steps…
• Restoration Planning, Feasibility and Design
• Project Implementation - $20.3M • Ecological (Trustees) • Fishing/Boating Access (Alcoa) • Cultural (SRMT)
• Monitoring • On-going Outreach
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Hard copies of the RCDP can be reviewed at locations in Akwesasne and Massena
•Akwesasne Library and Cultural Center, 321 State Route 37, Akwesasne, NY 13655, (518)358-2240
•St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Environment Division, 449 Frogtown Road, Akwesasne, NY 13655, By Appointment: (518) 358-5937
•St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Community Building, 412 State Route 37, Hogansburg, NY 13655, (518)358-2272
•Massena Public Library, 41 Glenn Street, Massena, NY 13662, (315)769-9914
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Electronic Copies Are Available at the Following Websites
• NOAA: http://www.darrp.noaa.gov/northeast/lawrence/index.html • (click on Case Documents)
• SRMT: http://www.srmtenv.org/index.php?spec=nrda_main
• USFWS: http://www.fws.gov/northeast/nyfo/ec/stlaw.htm
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Written Comments Should Be Sent To:
Lisa Rosman c/o NOAA Assessment and Restoration Division 290 Broadway, 20th Floor New York, NY 10007 Email: [email protected] Deadline: May 4, 2013
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